There's some lively, if not over subtle, comedy in this yarn of a girl who gains quick rewards as a beauty queen, but finds the going full of disillusionment and pitfalls.

There’s some lively, if not over subtle, comedy in this yarn of a girl who gains quick rewards as a beauty queen, but finds the going full of disillusionment and pitfalls.

Screenplay tends to soft pedal the problems involved and the writers (Val Guest and an observant journalist-author Robert Muller, who studied the beauty queen scene) seem reluctant to come out with their views on whether such contests are degrading or even dangerous to comely damsels who take them too seriously, or whether they are just a harmless giggle.

Story concerns a pretty stenographer (Janette Scott) who is joshed by a local newspaper columnist into entering a seaside pier contest. She wins and he takes over and builds her up into a regular contestant at such junkets who progresses steadily around the familiar circuit and gets into the big time league of big money, overblown publicity, commercialism and spurious glitter that’s the magnet.

Ian Hendry, as the poor man’s Svengali, is brisk and credible while Ronald Fraser, as his lenser buddy, also turns in a ripe performance.